Growing up in America in 1950’s was a great experience. We were celebrating our victory over the nazis and the JapHirohs.
I don’t there had ever been any time like it in the history of the world.
That TV in the living room (or wherever you might remember it to have been in your growing-up household) was, literally, not like anything that had happened before.
I mean, the radio was a warm-up; no doubt about it. But methinks that broadcasting electronic images into millions of post-war affluent living rooms broke open a portal of human experience that has fundamentally changed the nature of life itself in this modern world.
So there I was with Mickey and Minnie and Donald and Goofy and Walt Disney and Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody and Davy Crockett and the Flintstones and the Jetsons and Ed Sullivan.
Say what? Ed Sullivan? What’s he got to do with all that cartoonified fantasy world that we baby boomerts were growing up with?
Well, for one thing, Ed had Myron Cohen, the comedian. It was amazing to me that Myron, and other Jews, Milton Berle, Alan King et al, could make an industry out of comedy, after surviving the nazi holocaust.
All that to say . . . this is what I am thinking about today: Cohens, starting with funny guy Myron.
And now, fifty years down the road, there’s Michael Cohen up in New York, blowing the whistle on the trump scams.You go, Michael. Bust it wide open for Justice to be done.
But what really blew my mind about Cohens was Leonard. I mean, before he died he composed some of the most profound musical lyrics that ever graced the strands of post world-war voices.
Get a load of this: Leonard Cohen was reflecting on his life as he approached the Big D that we all must face some day. And Leonard sang it this way:
“I’ve done my best; I know it wasn’t much. I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch. I didn’t come here. . . just to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my tongue but “Hallelujah!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
That ancient utterance of praise took me back in time to the original role of the Cohens. . . back in the days of Melchizedek, Moses, Levi, Samuel, David, Zadok, when the Cohens, Leonard's ancestors, were priests of God.
And good ole Leonard, returning, whether he realised it or not in his heart or in his soul, to his roots, the ancient Cohenrole of Priest, chose to use his lifetime platform of song to conclude his last great musical statement with hallelujah!praise to the Lord who made us all.
Thereby going back to his ancient Cohen roots. You go, Leonard, wherever you are! Thanks for your input down here while you were able to offer up, spoken like a true Cohen, ” to do your best (that) wasn’t much.”
At any rate, my feeling about Leonard's song, Hallelujah, is that it strikes a chord in all of us who have ever wanted to give praise to a God we do not fully comprehend. All of us, really, at the end, have little choice in those last moments, or months, except to stand before the "Lord of Song" or the Lord of All, and proclaim Hallelujah! for the Life that has been given to us.
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